The pamperer

Dr. Adashek understands that small things matter in big events like childbirth

Dr. Joseph Adashek clearly loves his job.
He bounds through his offices at Desert Perinatal with enthusiasm and a broad smile, waving excitedly at everything. Even the bathrooms.

“Look how beautiful it is,” he says as he shows off the bathrooms, which are nicely tiled and feature custom fixtures more reminiscent of a luxury hotel than a clinic. “I read somewhere that a woman’s reaction to your bathrooms can affect their whole opinion of your practice. So I make sure that any woman who steps into one of my bathrooms is blown away.”

As an OB/GYN who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, Dr. Joseph Adashek is keenly aware of the needs of women, especially at such an important time in their lives. On the second floor of his building at Tropicana Avenue and Fort Apache Road, he has even installed a spa, Belly Bliss, which specializes in massages for pregnant women.

This attentiveness to his patients comes from a key experience. A few years ago, Dr. Adashek’s father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Helping his late father go through that experience deeply affected him.

“We were dealing with doctors who were very cold and rushed and not very sympathetic to what my father was going through and the questions we had,” Adashek explains. “I swore then that no patient of mine would ever go through that. … I just treat patients the way I would like to be treated.”

In fact, Dr. Adashek insists that if anyone should be grateful for his success as a doctor, it’s him.

“I get to be a caregiver to a family at a very special time in their lives,” he says. “And I have the intellectual challenge of having these complicated cases that require everything from specialized testing to surgery.” That appetite for challenges led him to become chairman of maternal/child health at Southern Hills Hospital as well as co-director of the Maternal Fetal Medicine Division at Summerlin Medical Center. He built his private practice up from “one exam room, an office, and two employees.” Currently, Desert Perinatal has about 90 employees in three locations across the Las Vegas valley.

“Honestly, I believe the secret to my success is that I love my work,” he says. “And who wouldn’t? I take my daughter to school, and I see all these families that I helped bring into the world.”

As if on cue, Adashek’s partner Paul Wilkes walks up and begins a hushed, jargon-filled anecdote that boils down to this: It was a difficult delivery, but both mother and newborn are now healthy and resting.

Wilkes looks tired but relieved. Adashek beams.

“I really have the best job in the world,” he says.